The various Birds of the Farm-yard have received due attention from the great dramatist. Chief among them, the cock is frequently cited, especially as a recognised chronometer of the morning hours, for in Elizabethan days this mode of indicating time had not gone out of popular use. We all remember the unhappy experience of the carrier in the inn at Rochester “since the first cock.”[164] We also recall how Capulet, bustling among his household, gave them a three-fold indication of the time:
Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath crow’d,
The curfew-bell hath rung, ’tis three o’clock.[165]
Shakespeare brings the cock’s shrill clarion even into his fairyland, for Ariel’s song breaks off at this signal:
Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.[166]
But the most detailed and impressive reference to this familiar bird occurs in the memorable scene on the platform before the Castle of Elsinore. The ghost had just appeared to Hamlet’s friends and
The Cock and Goose
Was about to speak when the cock crew.